Homeless young people in the North East have come forward to tell their stories after we launched our Home for Youth campaign yesterday.

Homeless young people in the North East have come forward to tell their stories after we launched our Home for Youth campaign yesterday.

The Chronicle, working with the Community Foundation, is hoping to raise awareness of youth homelessness and encourage local authorities to take the issue seriously when drawing up strategies to combat the wide problem.

David Bates was just 14 when he left foster parents and began moving from home to home.

For the past five months he has lived at the Byker Bridge Housing hostel in Newcastle and on Wednesday he moved for the first time into his own supervised flat.

David, now 17, of Heaton, said: "I was in care since I was five but I started staying out late and doing things my foster parents didn't like, so I went to live with my nana.

"That didn't work out so I stay-ed a different hotels in Whitley Bay. I have never had to sleep on the streets but some of the places I have stopped in have been awful.

"In one room I found dirty needles on the windowsill. In the hostels a lot of people are on drugs and they are always trying to get your money off you.

"It is good to finally have a place of my own."

David hopes to get a job working with animals when he is 18.

Ben Macdonald was expelled from school at 15 for stealing a video recorder to buy drugs and was eventually thrown out by his mum when he did not get a job.

After sleeping on the streets in the middle of winter and dossing on friends' floors he also found a bed at the Byker Bridge hostel. Now Ben has his own flat and is a bricklayer in Percy Main.

Ben, 17, of Daisy Hill, Walker, said: "The hostels in Newcastle are pretty horrible. Nothing is your own and a lot of people are on smack - heroin.

"I always wanted to be a computer programmer but I don't know if I will get to do that now."

If you have experienced homelessness and would like to tell your story please contact Sarah Knapton on (0191) 201 6269.